


You Can't Go Back

by stephanericher



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-08-20
Packaged: 2018-08-10 01:05:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7824178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>he’s too caught up in a scenario that doesn’t exist, but what if it does?</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Can't Go Back

When did this start? When did this gut-wrenching, agitating, lonely half-nauseating set of feelings start hitting him like a drummer on a dragon boat hitting their instrument over and over again in a sick rhythm, and when did it get so fast it never had the chance to go away? When had he stopped feeling a pang of homesickness every now and again, and start feeling it all the time, carrying it like an iron backpack?

It had been that way the first week at the academy, when he’d traced the highway routes on the outdated paper map his mom had given him, the routes they’d driven just to get him here, all piled into the car and he’d been sure he’d be sick of all of his siblings at the end and he kind of had been but at the same time he’d known he was going to miss them and their chatter and laughter and smiling and whining and kicking the back of his seat in the car. He hadn’t known how much, though; he hadn’t known how empty the room would seem with just him and Hunk, and behind the wall at the side of his bed wasn’t someone who’d play the same kind of shitty loud music and he could just bang on the wall and they’d bang back (but eventually turn it down) but someone who might as well be an alien.

And the food had sucked; his classmates had complained, too but they weren’t missing the same things he was, the eggs over easy and fried fish and grilled corn his mom made and the way he’d swap out stuff he didn’t like but his sister did for stuff he liked and she didn’t. Sitting on a bench in a cafeteria with however many other recruits eating stuff they all hated from trays and not knowing what to say had been completely different, so much worse.

But he’d learned how to bear it, how to stop wanting to call home and just ask them to leave the phone off the hook so he could hear everyone in the background while he did his homework and how to eat whatever they were serving and maybe enjoy it, how to talk to Hunk and the other kids without things getting awkward around the table. It hadn’t been the same, but it had been okay, and he’d settled in.

He’d missed the rain, of course; he’d missed the suburbs and going into the city and actual civilization, the sound of cars on the street and going outside to walk to school, but he’d supposed he’d have to get used to that eventually if he was going to go to space and be an astronaut and hang out on some dusty old moon in a space suit and then fly back every so often. But he’d also told himself that when that happened, he could go back home and stay there with his parents or one of his aunts or uncles or siblings for whatever time off he’d get, that the academy and its almost spacelike environment (he’d heard a rumor that they’d faked the first moon landing way back when, and they’d staged it out here in the dusty desert—they’d gone up later, of course, but back then they weren’t nearly advanced enough to do that and they didn’t even have the Internet). He hadn’t been sure about that, but it was fun to imagine staring out the window in physics on a Monday morning, that the craggy red rocks could turn to silver and he could bounce around like they do in the zero-g simulator on camera and fool the world.

And then he’d gone into space, real space, faster than he’d imagined was possible, before he could even register it was really happening. And for a while, that disbelief and the effort of processing everything—Allura and Coran, Voltron, the empire, his teammates—kept him from really missing home at all. But it’s like he’d held it back for so long that the accumulation had come tumbling down on him all at once in an avalanche and buried him with its weight.

But more than that, it’s another thought that sinks down on top of the others, makes them even worse, like suffocating slowly under the cold, wet, heavy snow when he’s already been trapped inside for too long. He might not ever get to go home. They might die trying to save the universe, and that would be bad enough, but what if they’re too late? What if the vehicle where Shiro crash-landed has already unleased Galra minions onto the planet, and by the time they get back or defeat Zarkon it’s too late? What if everyone is dead? What if all the planet’s resources have been absorbed, and it’s become desolate, uninhabitable? What if it’s all desert? What if it never rains? What if he goes back and can’t feel the wind from a passing storm off the sea blowing the water into his face, because there is no water?

What if space travel is just as shitty as the early theorists said it was, and it’s already been fifty lifetimes on earth? What if they get back in time to see the sun go supernova, or what if everything’s the same but their names have gone from missing persons to urban legends to footnotes to forgotten? What if he goes home and his house is just the way it was when he’d gone back to the academy after summer break, screen door broken and red paint peeling, his dad’s car idling in the driveway, only it’s not his dad’s car? It belongs to his great-grandnephew who’s really into vintage stuff, and no one who knew him is still alive, and he is a stranger in his own home, and yeah, he’s too caught up in a scenario that doesn’t exist, but what if it does?

And what if they can’t find their way back? His dad used to tell him about the stars and planets when he was a kid and they’d gaze up at the sky on a clear summer night in the backyard, about how mariners used to use constellations to guide their way in ancient times, about the big dipper and Orion and Sagittarius, and which stars are visible during which part of the year. But from this point in the universe, the stars aren’t the same; some of them might overlap but they’re too far away even to see their sun (Coran had tried to find it in the sky once and given up, waved in that general direction from the ship’s window, and Lance had tried really hard to laugh it off). And navigating the skies is different than the seas; the stars are never the same and they have advanced tools and technologies that can get them right home in no time if need be. Lance knows all of that as well as he knows the route from his house to the grocery store on a bike and back, and yet he’s afraid anyway. And the only thing that could maybe reassure him would be to wake up tomorrow in his own bed with his brother cursing at the alarm clock and the smell of burnt coffee wafting through the house to find out that this was all some twisted fever dream.

But he can’t count on that, either.

**Author's Note:**

> wow what a downer sorry


End file.
